


Time To Come Away

by dragonifyoudare



Series: Older stuff [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Codsworth is there but just barely, Dealing With Trauma, Fallout Kink Meme fill, Gen, fresh out of the Vault, shortfic, with no kinks or sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonifyoudare/pseuds/dragonifyoudare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tex slept on the floor of what was once her room the first night out of the Vault. The Pipboy said it was eight PM when she lay down, but her brain still insisted that it couldn’t be later than mid-afternoon. <i>Like jet lag,</i> she thought. Then: <i>There are no more jets.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Time To Come Away

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mark Knopfler's "Darling Pretty," because apparently my only method of titling things is to go through my Spotify account. Unbeta'd, because I don't know how to find a beta reader.

Tex slept on the floor of what was once her room the first night out of the Vault. The Pipboy said it was eight PM when she lay down, but her brain still insisted that it couldn’t be later than mid-afternoon. _Like jet lag,_ she thought. Then: _There are no more jets._ She curled up on her side and tried not to reach for the space where Nate should be lying next to her. When the sun woke her the next morning, she didn’t forget for a second where - and when - she was. She wanted to, but she didn’t.

Codsworth was in Shaun’s room, humming an entirely too jaunty tune. Texas got blearily to her feet and went to the doorway

“Good morning, Miss Texas!” Codsworth chirped. “I’m afraid we’re fresh out of coffee, but if you like, I’d be happy to heat you up a nice mug of purified, radiation free water!” He was dusting Shaun’s crib. Tex was surprised how little that sight affected her. She was stuck somewhere between disbelief and emotional exhaustion. The rage that had propelled out of Vault 111 the day before was nowhere to be found. She kept looking into Shaun’s room, prodding the open wound in her heart and waiting for a reaction. Nothing came.

“I’m going to Concord,” she said suddenly. Codsworth had said last night that there were people there. If they weren’t hostile, maybe they could give her the lay of the land. If they were… her husband was dead and her son was gone, and she had no concept of how long ago she’d lost them.

There was a chance that Shaun’s kidnappers had passed through recently enough to have left a trail, but it was a slim one. She’d gone back to the Vault yesterday, after her mad scramble down the rockface and her surreal conversation with Codsworth, and hadn’t been able to find anything. She wasn’t the outdoorswoman she’d been before college, but she was sure she would have seen _something_ if they’d been by recently.

 _Shaun could be a hundred years dead,_ she thought. _Oh God, my baby._ And with that, the dam broke. Despair flooded through her, so intense she nearly collapsed right where she was. Instead, she went back into the bedroom and lay down on the floor again. It was cold. Funny how she hadn’t noticed that last night. She started crying after a while, and then, when the anger started trickling back in beside the despair, to scream. She screamed again and again, wordless and ragged, until her throat burned like she’d been drinking molten metal.

Codsworth was hovering beside her when she finally sat up. He didn’t say anything, but she thought if he’d been capable of it, he would have looked pitying.

She didn’t need his pity. She needed to find her baby. Odds were she never would. Hell, odds were she’d be dead soon, if the roaches in this new world were anything to judge by. She was going to keep going, though, until the day they put her in the ground.

Maybe there would be no one to put her in the ground. That was a terrifying thought, and yesterday - two hundred years ago - if would have made her shudder. Today, it was a flash in the pan. She loaded her pistol and started the hike to Concord.


End file.
